With the advent of technology, there has been a tremendous change in purchasing trends of the consumers and sellers have expanded the market manifold to meet the demand of the consumers. However, some of the sellers have taken unfair advantage of the consumer purchasing trends to sell counterfeiting or fake products. Currently, most of the products sold via online stores or physical stores are counterfeit products and determining the authenticity of genuine products is crucial. In one example scenario, products manufactured by a producer may be distributed globally through a supply chain. The supply chain may include intermediaries, such as retailers, whole-sellers, authorized or non-authorized vendors, etc. In such a scenario, during a transit or storage, the products may be replicated by counterfeiters. As the products are globally distributed, there may be trading between one or more countries through parallel importing of the products. In such scenario, rate of counterfeiting of products may be high as products sold through parallel importing may lack consent of the actual producer. At present, counterfeit products have become one of the major issues encountered by both consumers and sellers. Such counterfeiting of products, for example, pharmaceutical items or edible products may cause life-threatening consequences. In addition, the consumer may not be provided with proper customer support from the producer due to lack of authenticity of the product purchased.
Conventionally, an identification code including, but not limited to, a barcode, a quick response (QR) code, etc. are printed on a product or packaging of the product to identify the origin of the product. For example, a barcode printed on a package of product includes information related to the product such as geographical location, ingredient lists, time of manufacture, etc. However, in some cases, some counterfeiters may replicate the barcode that may hinder the producers as well as the consumers. In some other scenarios, the counterfeiters may replicate an entire package of the product. The producers may face a huge monetary loss that may affect businesses and may even be detrimental to the goodwill and repute acquired by the producers during the course of business. The consumer may be deceived by counterfeiting products and may not trust producers which may result in the producer losing loyal customers. This may lead the consumer to look for a better producer in order to purchase genuine and authorized products even though the producers may be selling the genuine products at higher prices.
Generally, the identification code such as a barcode is identifiable using a device such as a barcode scanner. However, it may happen that such devices may not be feasible or accessible to the consumers for authenticating the product. For example, data that are encoded in the barcode may not be publicly available for verification by the consumers. It may also happen that the device may be expensive for use by the consumers.
In view of the above-mentioned problems there is a need for a technique where the consumers can verify the authenticity of products and thereby prevent purchasing of counterfeit products. The solution should further be capable of securing all parts of a product ranging from package such as carton, box, medicine strips, tube, bottle, cap to barcode, product label, aluminum foils, plastic wraps, etc.